UC San Diego students cultivate produce in Earl’s Garden, which was recently adopted by the university’s student-run Food Co-op. Erika Johnson • UC San Diego University Communications

At UC San Diego, undergraduate student-run gardens are fulfilling university sustainability initiatives and fostering campus community.

Each Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon, more than 30 volunteers gather at Roger’s Community Garden to cultivate organic plants and produce. A quarter-acre plot at Revelle College, one of UC San Diego’s six residential colleges, Roger’s Garden is bursting with organic vegetation such as herbs, onions, tomatoes, blackberries and its very own miniature fruit orchard.

Roger’s Community Garden sprouted on campus five years ago when the student founders secured their first grant from the university’s The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF). As articulated by the TGIF mission statement, such grants provide “funding for projects that reduce UC San Diego’s negative impact on the environment, in addition to making UC San Diego more sustainable in both the social and environmental sense.”

“We do the best we can to make it as legit and old-school as possible while still using new ideas, so we’re not planting in the dark ages,” jokes Zack Osborn, ﻿a biochemistry major, “garden guru” and landscaper for Roger’s Community Garden. The garden team, however, notes the potential danger associated with excesses in biotechnology — for example, when genetically modified plants crossbreed in nature to produce “super weeds.”

Erik Hauenstein, ﻿an environmental engineering major and the student coordinator for Roger’s Garden, is working to sell produce and herbs to student-run eateries and dining halls. He has already coordinated Roger’s first onion sale to the campus Food Co-op, but wishes to expand the efforts.

Roger’s Garden is just one of four student-run gardens at UC San Diego. Three of them — Roger’s, Earl’s and Ellie’s — are named after the individuals to whom their respective colleges are dedicated: scientist Roger Revelle, a founder of the university; former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

On the Warren College campus, Earl’s Garden is preparing for its new role as food supplier to the student-run Food Co-op, a vegetarian and predominantly vegan campus eatery in operation for more than 30 years. The former student coordinator of Earl’s Garden, a graduating senior, recently transferred management to the Food Co-op to ensure long-term commitment to the garden’s upkeep.

The co-op will supplement its produce supply with crops from the newly adopted Earl’s Garden. Dylan Blackie, a core member of the co-op, says, “With Earl’s Garden we are hoping to supplement this supply of produce, to be worked in any and all of our freshly prepared foods. And of course, all volunteers will be able to help themselves to the produce they help grow.”

Like Roger’s Garden, Earl’s receives funding from a TGIF grant and commits itself to sustainable gardening methods such as companion planting, permaculture and biodiversity.